There is one word to describe the story told by Tristan Péloquin about this citizen of Saint-Constant who reigned terror among the employees and elected officials of this municipality. That’s the word “terrifying.”
Michel Vachon is obsessed with what is happening in the City of Saint-Constant, he suspects embezzlement. He increased his attendance at city council meetings, made repeated requests for access to information.
Until this point in history, Michel Vachon exercised his rights as a citizen.
But what Tristan’s investigation exposes is the dive into the dark side of the civic engagement of a man who terrorizes elected officials and civil servants.
Since 2016, Michel Vachon has multiplied aggressive and sometimes violent behavior. He follows civil servants to observe them when they dine in restaurants in Saint-Constant, he notes the license plates of elected officials and employees and approaches them insistently.
General manager Nancy Trottier, for her part, was followed by Michel Vachon while she was driving. She filed a harassment complaint. She got what is called an “810,” a promise not to approach the person who made the complaint.
Two elected municipal officials were also pushed around by Michel Vachon, who had to answer for his actions in court.
Michel Vachon was also arrested after attacking the director of legal affairs of Saint-Constant, Sophie Laflamme. The lawyer was quietly walking her dog, in her neighborhood, when Michel Vachon arose on a bicycle in front of her, to throw her violently to the ground.
The sequence was filmed by the surveillance camera of a residence. I watched it and, naively, I thought that Mr. Vachon was going to get a few months in prison, if not a few years for this gesture…
After all, here is a man who goes to the district of Me Laflamme on purpose, who rushes at her on his bike as soon as he sees her and who throws her to the ground, voluntarily, slyly, while preventing her from getting up…
If that does not deserve a long stay in prison, what deserves a long stay in prison?
Except that no: Michel Vachon did 36 days for this attack. I add: only 36 days in prison. Me Laflamme had only bruises to show in court: his mental injuries are not visible: “He was convicted of common assault because I did not piss blood”, explained to me the Director of Legal Affairs of Saint-Constant, in an interview.
Michel Vachon has not respected his conditions of release and the injunctions issued against him, according to Mayor Jean-Claude Boyer. He’s not allowed to show up at City Hall? He shows up anyway. When he attacked Sophie Laflamme in his neighborhood, he was under an injunction prohibiting him from approaching employees and elected officials of Saint-Constant…
And he did it anyway!
“He does not recognize anything, he considers himself in his right”, notes Boyer.
Even when a judge – who refused to convict him – asks him to stop his aggressive actions, Mr. Vachon refuses to discipline himself.
My colleague Tristan Péloquin spoke to Mr. Vachon. He recognizes no wrong and believes that his forced confinement in psychiatry – at the request of the City, in civil proceedings, in the name of his legal responsibility as an employer – is, once again, a vast conspiracy.
Elected officials and officials of municipalities are used to dealing with a category of vexatious citizens who are usually hyperzealous people who take the affairs of the City very, very, very (too) seriously…
Then there are more worrying, extraordinary cases, such as that of Citizen Vachon.
Aggressive types, who see black, who see conspiracies everywhere, all the time… And who consider themselves persecuted. Psychiatrists will tell you that it is an explosive cocktail.
I precisely submitted the details of the Vachon-Saint-Constant saga to a psychiatrist I know, someone who has already done expert opinions for the courts.
He made three observations to me, based on decades of practice.
Primo: “For a justice system that advocates rehabilitation, this kind of case is an enigma. For example, he has not committed enough crimes to be declared a dangerous offender. But what drives him can’t be cured, so he can’t rehabilitate himself. »
Secondly: “The Court lets this type of case drag on for a very simple reason, in the name of the freedom of individuals. We can say that what the people of Saint-Constant are going through is the price of freedom: we are protecting rights that sick people should not have. »
Third: “For things to move, unfortunately, these people have to become even more violent. There is a risk of acting aggressively, because he has committed aggressive acts. »
The City of Saint-Constant addressed itself in desperation to the government of Quebec in a heartbreaking letter, where it expressed its distress and its distress in the face of an extraordinary case which puts its elected officials and its employees at risk, all sorts of ways.
I hope that someone in Quebec can help the municipality of Saint-Constant… And all the others who are going through similar situations of aggressive harassment.
While reading this letter, I had a terrible thought: if Michel Vachon pushes his violence even further, no one will be able to say: we didn’t know.